I Could Be Wrong
by Celeste Goodchild
Summary: Do you ever wonder where Mikage got his duelling sword from? Rated for the disturbing double entendre and the more disturbing higher physics.


**_I Could Be Wrong_**

_(but then you know I'm right)_

_dedicated__ to thornescratch – il miglior fabbro_

There are more than one hundred coffins in this place he so facetiously refers to as a sacred land. To be precise, there are one hundred and one, arranged in a pattern that makes sense only when one accounts for its random nature. Entropy measures the disorder of a singular system, and chaos is the most powerful force in any universe – including the private universe he has designed for the only two who will truly matter in its final state.

It is that last coffin which calls him now. Even though he has seen Mamiya linger over the fine filigree patterns of its head, of its body, Mikage has never contemplated opening it before now. Allowing Mamiya to tend to both the living and the dead has always given Mikage the necessary time with which to concentrate on his own concerns.

But then, up until this moment, Mikage's concern has never been to wonder which state Mamiya would classify him as being if he were asked to do so.

Mikage's curiosity awakens only as the hourglasses stop running slow and decide to run fast instead; once awoken, that beast does not stay quiescent for long. It knows the hollow mind of the one it resides inside, and seeks externally for sustenance. Thus, with Mamiya's final black rose burning upon his breast, Mikage steps from the elevator to take from that coffin the last factor required in his final equation.

The coffin is opened with a scientific detachment, and he wears that objectivity as a mask against the body he discovers within. It is not like the skeletons that linger in the other chambers as if they are closets instead of coffins, with their black rings contrasted sharply against bleached white bone. No, this former living being is still yet a body made of flesh. He has changed, of course; that old familiar flesh is now the colour of bone, hair that was once so pale pink only reduced silver now. His organic components are colourless, the former professor now only an empty egg-shell dressed as always in his habitual purple and black.

He's not sure what drives him to do it, but he performs his next action anyway (a perfect marionette yet to tangle in his own strings!). All probabilities are accounted for in the laws of quantum mechanics; while it may be only a one in two thousand possibility that the electron exists outside of the orbit defined by Planck's constant, the electron still exists in a world where that possibility may become fact.

With care not to jar his pained shoulder he slips into the coffin, expecting the repulsion of likes. But this body must be unlike his, after all; the face turns without hesitation towards his own, eyes flat behind curved lenses.

"Two people can fit into this coffin," Mikage remarks easily, and does not move from his chosen position within the confines of this shallow box.

The eyes behind the glasses narrow, and Mikage is reminded strangely of cats, of impossible simultaneous states. "That does not mean that you should be in here."

"Perhaps not." That is the only answer that Mikage will grant this strange man who invalidates the Pauli exclusion principle; it is with abject fascination that he reaches out to lay the fingers of his right hand upon the pale shadow at his side. "…like a mirror image made flesh."

The professor draws away from the touch, as if pushed by electrostatic repulsion; is this coffin really big enough for actions such as this? Mikage can feel the pale body pressed up against him, yet when he looks it is as if a cavernous space yawns between them…or perhaps it is only the width of a pane of looking-glass. "We are not the same."

"Do you behave as a particle, professor," he asks conversationally as his fingertips smudge the tinted glass instead, "or do you behave as a wave?"

"Idiot." Strange how this man will let scorn into his voice now, but then he has never suffered fools gladly. "I behave as both."

The man does not protest this time when Mikage leans forward, their faces nose to nose as he seeks out the crimson colour behind the violet lenses; long wavelengths made short, particles hiding particles. "What is the critical angle for total internal reflection when looking out at the world from inside a glass coffin, professor?"

"Perhaps you are the one who should tell me that."

With his own hand pressed flat against the professor's, Mikage discovers that the man in this box is as cold as the surface of a mirror. "If I were to draw a series of rays through a focal point, professor," he muses aloud, "then where might I find the reflected image?"

The shielded eyes blink once, twice; Mikage can almost see the mind turning over the problem like a running river constantly turns over the smallest of pebbles. "Where is the lens?"

"What use is a lens?"

"The usefulness lies in its ability to produce an image." For the first time, the professor reaches forward with one of his gloved hands, allows his fingers to linger in the pale strands of his shadow's thin hair. "Whether real, or virtual it may be."

Mikage leans into the touch, meets the masked eyes steadily. "Which am I, professor?"

"I could not say."

"I am as real as you."

"In light of your form that would appear to be the case." A small murmur of agreement, and the professor shifts uncomfortably under the strong hands of Mikage Souji. "I could be wrong," and the protest is as hollow as those who are merely heads stuffed with straw.

Mikage smiles, leans forward; his hand is over the professor's clockwork heart and his smile is crooked. "But then you know I'm right."

Silence comes only when both sets of eyes are closed – those which are behind lenses, those which do not need to see through a glass to see darkly. Not even the broken rhythm of their joint breathing seems enough to cut through the heavy pervasive air; the sound they create breaks upon itself, echoing back in perfect interference so that no voice remains.

In this space, no-one hears any scream because perhaps no-one ever screamed at all.

They cancel each other out, particles in this small box; the touch of the other's hand could be the touch of one's own, but there is scarcely anyway to tell the difference in the silence and the darkness. There is pain, perhaps, but it exists in a different place as the shadow seeks deeply the professor's heart and takes from it the final offering it has to give.

The coffin should not be big enough for this, and yet in that singular moment it is as vast as a universe that needs no end to be finite.

He opens his eyes only when he rises, a cadaver from an uncomfortable grave; there is no satisfaction, but no regret. Out of the coffin and into the mausoleum, and the silence continues as if it were the only perpetual motion machine possible in this world. Mikage does not push the sarcophagus back into the wall, and when he looks back he knows why.

The coffin is empty, and there is room only for one.

Mikage pushes aside the memory of how all coffins were brought here by the ones intended to fill them, and goes to the waiting elevator with the professor's sword in hand. When it is this low it can only go up, after all.


End file.
